De Stijl is the name of a Journal which was founded in 1917 in Holland by Theo Van Doesburg which brought together painters , artists and writers who created a forum to exchange principles and ideas about different subjects. Visually the groups believed in absolute abstraction, the elimination of any reference to existing objects an used as a mean of expression only lines, primary colors(red yellow and blue) with the addition of black , white and gray, the right angle, the horizontal and the vertical.
The content of De Stijl work is harmony and the main goal was to renew the link between life and art and create a new style of living. Indeed the movement was founded during World War 1 where chaos reigned and the necessity for harmony and balance was really important for the artists, but also for the entire population.
The movement fell apart after the death of its primary spokesman Van Doesburg in 1931.
In paintings Mondrian was one of the most important exponent of this movement, while in architecture Rietveld designed an house in collaboration with Mrs truus Schtoder – Scrader in Utrecht which become the most significant monument of De Stijl Architecture(Jaffé, p. 11,12,13,14,15).
In France Le Corbusier and the cubist painter Ozenfant started a short – lived artistic movement based on Cubism which was know with the name “Purism”. Le Corbusier during this period painted most of the time common objects such as glasses and bottles and tried to achieve plastic solution and pure forms. Then he changed the subject of his paintings with roots, pebbles, butcher’s bones, a finally the human figure which is an infinite source of inspiration for deconstruction and composition of new forms. This paintings were for him a mean to achieve new forms and an inspiration to develop new architectural structures(Boesiger, Girsberger, p.295).
In the meantime in Germany the new school of Art and Design called “Bauhaus”, was dictating with his manifesto, a new way of thinking about the artistic process of manufacturing an object. Indeed The construction of the object itself becomes the main goal and the collaboration between the craftsman and the artist necessary to create a complete work of art. Also the pedagogic program taught at the Bauhaus between 1923 and 1928 by Moholy Nagy, Kandisky and Lisstzy codified the principles of russian constructivism which believed in the creation of new spatial relationship, new inventions of forms and new visual laws(Nash, p.57).
References:
H.Jaffé,M. Bock, K. Broos, M. Filler, K. Framton, M. friedman, G. Hermsen, J. Joosten, R. Oxenaar, S. polano, N. Troy, R. Welsh, De Stijl: 1917 – 1931 Visions of Utopia, Friedman editor, 1982, Oxford.
W. Boesiger, H. Girsberger, Le Corbusier 1910 – 1965, Birkhauser,1999, 2nd ed., Italy
J. Nash, Cubism, Futurism and Constructivism, Themes and Hudson, 1974, London
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